Question

Explain why health promotion, community health, and prevention are important.

How do national organizations like the CDC influence and support policy making, and what is their role in health promotion?

How is the CDC currently addressing the Millennium Development Goals (MDG)?

How do organizations like the CDC and the WHO work together to influence health and healthcare delivery?

Answer 1

1.

Health promotion is the process of improving and protecting the health of the public, including individuals, populations, and communities. Health promotion and disease prevention can be achieved through planned activities and programs that are designed to improve population health outcomes. Health promotion and disease prevention programs can empower individuals to make healthier choices and reduce their risk of disease and disability. At the population level, they can eliminate health disparities, improve quality of life, and improve the availability of healthcare and related services.

Health promotion programs can be implemented in varied settings, including rural communities. Rural residents can benefit from health promotion and disease prevention programs scaled for use in rural communities, which have unique implementation considerations.Health promotion and disease prevention programs focus on keeping people healthy. Health promotion programs aim to engage and empower individuals and communities to choose healthy behaviors, and make changes that reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases and other morbidities.

According to WHO health promotion enables people to increase control over their own health. It covers a wide range of social and environmental interventions that are designed to benefit and protect individual people’s health and quality of life by addressing and preventing the root causes of ill health, not just focusing on treatment and cure.Disease prevention differs from health promotion because it focuses on specific efforts aimed at reducing the development and severity of chronic diseases and other morbidities.

Wellness is related to health promotion and disease prevention. Wellness is described as the attitudes and active decisions made by an individual that contribute to positive health behaviors and outcomes.
Health promotion and disease prevention programs often address social determinants of health, which influence modifiable risk behaviors. Social determinants of health are the economic, social, cultural, and political conditions in which people are born, grow, and live that affect health status. Modifiable risk behaviors include, for example, tobacco use, poor eating habits, and lack of physical activity, which contribute to the development of chronic disease.

Typical activities for health promotion, disease prevention, and wellness programs include:

Communication: Raising awareness about healthy behaviors for the general public. Examples of communication strategies include public service announcements, health fairs, mass media campaigns, and newsletters.
Education: Empowering behavior change and actions through increased knowledge. Examples of health education strategies include courses, trainings, and support groups.
Policy, Systems, and Environment: Making systematic changes – through improved laws, rules, and regulations (policy), functional organizational components (systems), and economic, social, or physical environment – to encourage, make available, and enable healthy choices.